Six Things That Never Happened to Joren of Stone M
by sarcastic rabbit
Summary: Birthday fic for Sally. My answer to all those wildly implausible KelJoren fics. Warning for a hint of slash: Don't like it, Don't read it.


_Disclaimer: Joren, Wyldon and Omer, or Owain, or whatever his name is, are all creations of The Author Known as Tamora Pierce._

_Many thanks to Fen and Sally for the beta-job, and Fen for the grey eyes. Any and all run-on sentences which remain are entirely my fault.  
_

_ Six Things that Never Happened to Joren of Stone-Mountain_

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"He has exceeded my expectations. He is the most promising prospect we have had in years. He brings credit to Stone-Mountain." Coming from the rigid Training Master, the measured, stilted statements have the gravity of a Mithran Priest pronouncing prophecies from his God.

11-year-old Joren looks up at Lord Wyldon's stern eyes and carved-marble features, his father's hand on his shoulder, and nearly expires with pride.

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Joren's first day of third-year page training starts off as a great improvement on his summer. It could hardly be worse. The past year has seen the playing out of a short but fierce struggle for survival between Tortall's humans, and the unworldly (but hardly godly) creatures overrunning their country.

The historians have already dubbed it the "Immortals War."

Joren spent his summer cowering in the overcrowded Great Hall of Stone-Mountain Keep with his extended family, the Stone-Mountain servants, and the entire peasant and livestock population of his family's fief. They hid from a deluge of rampaging blue-skinned ogres and aerial horses, winged and fanged, until the Crown's soldiers could rescue them in the aftermath of the war from their irritable, stinking, terrified state.

Through it all, Joren had been looking forward to his Training Master's calm, sane presence. Seeing him now, however, he is shocked. One finely-chiselled cheek is marred by an ugly red scar that runs from the corner of an eye to his ear. Lord Wyldon's arm is tied up in a sling, and he looks thinner and, if possible, grimmer than the year before.

Joren traces Lord Wyldon's disapproving gaze to the _girl_ who has showed up for training this year—what a joke—and feels a burst of rage on Lord Wyldon's behalf. After all the Training Master has been through, saving the Royal children from the monstrous hurroks with a hero's courage, the King has forced this shame on him.

It's not fair, Joren thinks. Lord Wyldon is far too honourable to ever speak out against his duty. And so he is made to train the _girl-knight_ without a protest, as though he were not the butt of jokes all over the Palace for doing so.

White-blond eyelashes narrow speculatively as Joren stares at the big, brown-haired girl; a jumped-up merchant's get who clearly has no concept of _nobility _or _honour._ Obviously, whoever gets her to give up her ridiculous ideas and go home will be doing the Training Master a favour. Too bad the welcoming surprise that Joren and his friends left for the girl hasn't persuaded her to leave.

Joren will have to think about this.

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Joren likes his place in the sun. It is _his_ place by right; has been since he was born. It has been assured by his unusual good looks—fairer and more blue-eyed than most Scanrans far to the north—his happy lot of athletic ability from the gods or his parents, and his status as the first-born son of a noble family.

It was therefore right and normal for the Training Master to see Joren's promise in his early days as a page, and to single him out as the best of the bunch frequently over the years.

What is _not _normal, where Joren is concerned, is that he values Lord Wyldon's good opinion more than that of anyone else he knows. It has never concerned him before whether someone thought well of him. _Of course_, people think well of him; why on earth would they not? Yet it matters desperately to Joren that Lord Wyldon notice his swordwork in the practice courts is the best. Joren needs to see the approval in those grave brown eyes, in that face so unaccustomed to levity.

So Joren notices when Lord Wyldon stops looking pleased at his brilliance in the fighting arts—as pleased as one can look while appearing to carry the burdens of the civilized world and a misguided reformer of a King on one's broad shoulders. Lord Wyldon, to a great extent, has stopped noticing Joren very much at all. He looks most displeased with page-training and life in general. And every time the Training Master looks at that _girl, _who despite Joren's best efforts will just not give up, Joren knows exactly the expression the Training Master's face will have: patrician features determinedly _not_ radiating disapproval, with just the tiniest bit of bafflement in the eyes: _Why_ won't the girl go home?

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"—What on earth, Stone-Mountain!"

The hurrok claw-mark on the Training Master's cheek has long-since healed, but the jagged scar will be there for life. It ruins the otherwise perfect symmetry of the Training-Master's face, which despite its receding hairline could easily pass as a sculptor's model of one of the sterner minor deities beholden to Mithros: Duty, or perhaps Justice. Joren finds himself unaccountably distracted by the scar. His eyes trace the uneven contours, and his fingers itch to smooth and soothe the ridges.

"Stone-Mountain." Joren quickly jerks his gaze back to centre, and folds his traitorous fingers into fists. Wyldon is as dumfounded as he has ever seen him, poor man.

"If I understand correctly, you just volunteered for service as my squire."

"Yes, my Lord," Joren answers carefully.

Looking pole-axed, Wyldon forges on courageously. "Surely you must realize that this breaks every tradition imaginable, foremost of which is that _the knight-master picks his squire_, not the other way around. A fact which, versed in the proper traditions as you are, you must be well aware."

"I am aware of proper tradition in these matters, my Lord," Joren replies, looking straight into the man's eyes.

"Then you must know what an impossible request this is, Stone-Mountain," concludes Wyldon, looking relieved. His shoulders remain stiff, as though not entirely certain that this threat is over.

"Yes, my Lord," Joren says, holding Wyldon's deep brown gaze unblinkingly. His eyes are now on a level with the older man's, his shoulders nearly as broad. With carefully restrained intensity, yet evident sincerity, he continues. "However, I feel that tradition notwithstanding, there are cases when circumstances warrant a special intervention, as when an otherwise mutually beneficial arrangement might be missed for lack of information on the part of one of the parties concerned."

Joren holds his breath carefully, until Wyldon says, not without some bemusement, "You argue like an Advocate, Stone-Mountain. Very well then—what is it I should know?"

Joren remains outwardly poised as his thoughts race and squirm, desperate to get this exactly right. He unconsciously leans in towards the other man, as he does _not_ mention the two well-respected knights who have already offered to take him on as Squire. Neither does he mention the plot he will soon spin in motion to rid Wyldon of his most irksome burden in life, that _female_ who thinks to become a knight. Wyldon will no doubt be most grateful for her absence, if unable to express such gratitude around his rigid ideas of duty and honour. And Joren _certainly_ does not mention the girls—and men—who swoon over his ice-pale beauty and his ice-pale arrogance. Joren has been waiting for this opportunity his entire life: a chance for Wyldon to see him for once as more than a responsibility, or a human block of clay to be moulded into its proper shape. At last, Wyldon is looking at him as a proper person: a person with potential and possibilities.

Joren licks dry lips, and leans in further still towards Wyldon, speaking earnestly. "My Lord, I have greatly admired you throughout my training as a man of great courage, great intellect, and above all, great moral sense. One who is willing to go to any length of self-sacrifice in order to fulfill what he knows is the proper course of duty…"

"You flatter me, Stone-Mountain," interrupts Wyldon, with a sardonic twist to his beautifully-shaped lips. "No man is such a paragon of virtue, save perhaps the stone demi-gods we see decorating the temple pediments."

The irony of it is that Wyldon actually believes himself to be a man full of failings; that he doesn't know how far above other men he has set himself for those able to discern the higher qualities that ennoble manly nature.

Joren quickly adds, "Nevertheless, my Lord, you have always seemed such a "paragon" to me, or as close as can be achieved by we mortals, with our inherently weak natures granted by the gods in their wisdom, that we might strive to better ourselves." He goes on, getting to the heart of it, before the furrow in the older man's brow becomes a verbal negative, bringing this conversation to an end.

"As matters stand, there is no other Knight I could hope to profit from so much on close association as yourself. And as you, the Training-Master, would most likely not think to take on a squire, I took it upon myself to break with tradition in bringing this matter to your attention…"

Joren can feel himself backing off, weakening, and leans in with the most dignified intensity he can muster, blue eyes wide with icy passion. "This could be an arrangement mutually beneficial to us both, My Lord." And a witty hit to lighten the mood and show courtly sophistication: "After all, when two like minds are in accord, what can stand in their way?"

And Joren reaches out to clasp Wyldon's shoulder, fingers and thumb and palm curving around linen-covered flesh.

Wyldon starts at the contact, jerking like a badly hung gate.

"I fear I must decline your invitation, Stone-Mountain. You were quite correct in saying that as Training-Master, I require no squire, and will not be taking one." Gone is any trace of the personal connection he had shown the ability to make just now. Wyldon's grim armour is firmly back in place, and Joren is once again Page rather than person.

Wyldon is ushering Joren towards the door, making polite expressions of gratitude at Joren's intent to do him honour with his unusual request, which he must unfortunately decline, and the moment is quickly over. Though it is not quick enough for Joren, who caught in Wyldon's stern face, before it was hidden, a look of cold disgust at his touch.

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Joren is back from a year's training with Paxton of Nond, his Knight-Master; a decent if uninspiring man. He sits for the morning meal in the pages' and squires' Dining Hall, making no attempt to hide the fact that has been gazing at his former Training-Master for the last five minutes. Wyldon is resolutely not looking in his direction, and has not said a word to him since he returned to the Palace.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?"

Joren turns his most glacial stare on the other lone breakfaster at his table: a chubby page of 14 years or so, with ridiculous floppy brown curls, big ears, and unexpectedly shrewd grey eyes. Omer, or Owain, or some such name—Joren can't recall which.

"You've been pouting for as long as I've been at breakfast, at the least," the page says with revolting cheeriness. "Your oatmeal must be like a rock by now." His gaze is entirely too familiar, and extremely unwelcome.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Joren replies. For sheer coldness, his voice outdoes his gaze one-hundredfold, like a January blizzard in the desert.

The moronic page is too stupid to be cowed, and even has the effrontery to address him again. Discipline among pages has obviously gone to the hurroks since he's left.

"You'll never get him, you know."

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The door to the Chamber swings open, to the hushed expectation of the small group waiting outside. After a minute or so, it is obvious that no one is coming out. At first there is indecision, with none of the group willing to take action. Then a white-blond couple, middle aged and richly dressed, reluctantly walk through the Chamber doorway.

A hoarse shout and a woman's sobbing bring forward the others to peer through the doorway, and see what is left for them to see: Joren of Stone-Mountain, perfect in his white-fair beauty, dead on his back in the stone Chamber, completely naked except for a triumphant smile.

Fin

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Happy birthday, Sally dear.

So here it is…..yet _another_ villain fic for the growing collection.

According to the coolest website in Tamora Pierce fandom, REGICIDE (find the link on my profile page), Joren rates a mere "one black crown out of ten" on the evilness scale. Here's what the judges of vileness and villainy have to say about him:

_"Joren, Joren, Joren...What did he do, anyway? Acted chauvanistic, organized a urine attack on Kel's door, paid men to kidnap a maid, flipped his hair all manly-like...and then was killed by a closet. Extra points for kicking Kel's ass. Points taken off because she was TEN." _

Ten out of ten black crowns, and top billing as the most evil villain in Tortall goes of course to Roger of Conte, whom gets lauded as the _"villain's villain."_ No surprises there.

Yours on the slippery and twisted downward road to evilness,

Imogen

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."--_Anonymous _

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